I'd be afraid to turn on the TV if we ever adopted anything similar to the EAS in America.

The noise is bloody awful and spine-chilling. I much prefer the Japanese system that's been posted about a couple of times.

I've only seen one clip of the Japanese system that's since vanished from YouTube. The screen went blank and a map popped up of what I think was an area where a tsunami was imminent. The noise that accompanied it was what can only be described as a dalek deep throating a Speak & Spell.

I'd be afraid to turn on the TV if we ever adopted anything similar to the EAS in America.

The noise is bloody awful and spine-chilling. I much prefer the Japanese system that's been posted about a couple of times.

I've only seen one clip of the Japanese system that's since vanished from YouTube. The screen went blank and a map popped up of what I think was an area where a tsunami was imminent. The noise that accompanied it was what can only be described as a dalek deep throating a Speak & Spell.

It's how I imagine a warning siren would sound like at a holiday camp.

A lot of radio stations run with a CMS designed by a company called Aair which has a really good school closures engine integrated into the system. During an emergency stations can pull the main site and replace it with a low-bandwidth closures page detailing the latest information.

The EAS is scary as hell. I wonder how things would play out if the MET office were aware a repeat of the 1987 storm was about to hit?

The EAS is scary as hell. I wonder how things would play out if the MET office were aware a repeat of the 1987 storm was about to hit?

If you think the EAS sound is annoying you should hear the Canadian version:

The Canadian version recently launched. And the US is going to require stations to air alerts via text and speech in both English and Spanish soon.

Just as an FYI the video I posted earlier is what pops up if you have cable. Cable companies have to alert viewers in the affected areas. I'm not sure of the specifics but when alert is issued the simple screen is automatically made and tuned to a public access channel. They then rebroadcast that channel on every current channel - and just for good measure they lock down your cable boxes preventing you from accessing menus or attempting to change the channel. But thankfully it only appears for a minute or two and disappears.

Thank you for the insight. Now a days the alerts for closings come from all the mentioned sources but the television is the main way people are still notified.

The BBC and ITV have a system, which is a bit ad hoc, to cope with missing kids don't they?

In terms of things like school closings, that's definitely the province of BBC Local Radio - and everyone knows to tune to it if there is bad weather, and the Breakfast News regional bulletins will include a "For full details of school closures because of the bad weather, check with your BBC Local Radio station".

The nature of our weather is that we don't really have a need for tornado, hurricane, earthquake and tsunami alerts like the US, Canada and Japan do.

The BBC and ITV have a system, which is a bit ad hoc, to cope with missing kids don't they?

In terms of things like school closings, that's definitely the province of BBC Local Radio - and everyone knows to tune to it if there is bad weather, and the Breakfast News regional bulletins will include a "For full details of school closures because of the bad weather, check with your BBC Local Radio station".

One thing we could take from US 'local' TV is scrolling captions on network output.

There's no technical reason why the regional BBC centres couldn't have an info ticker on the screen during Breakfast, (and any other time during local emergencies). Rather more difficult for ITV, because of their different network architecture, (they'd have to install gfx engines at Chiswick and Leeds on each regional Tx feed)

The BBC and ITV have a system, which is a bit ad hoc, to cope with missing kids don't they?

In terms of things like school closings, that's definitely the province of BBC Local Radio - and everyone knows to tune to it if there is bad weather, and the Breakfast News regional bulletins will include a "For full details of school closures because of the bad weather, check with your BBC Local Radio station".

One thing we could take from US 'local' TV is scrolling captions on network output.

There's no technical reason why the regional BBC centres couldn't have an info ticker on the screen during Breakfast, (and any other time during local emergencies). Rather more difficult for ITV, because of their different network architecture, (they'd have to install gfx engines at Chiswick and Leeds on each regional Tx feed)

Would only work on BBC One SD in England though (and now Plymouth have upgraded it wouldn't splat a PAL footprint on network - apart possibly from Jersey?).

Another issue is designing a graphic style that would work without a push-back.